by Beth Miller
Mrs Morente told us to go and play. Then she said something to Laura in Spanish that I didn’t understand. Laura looked at her feet and nodded.
‘Aren’t they good girls?’ Mrs Morente said to Dad, and he said, ‘They sure are.’
We went back upstairs and did a quiz in Patches about our ideal boy. Laura likes dangerous boys whereas I like romantic ones. It got pretty late so I had to tell Dad it was time to go.
Mum opened the door before Dad had got his key out. She stared at my face and said, ‘Oh, are you planning to join the circus?’
I yelled at Mum that she was horrible, and ran upstairs. Then I realised I needed her cleansing cream. I listened at the top of the stairs to hear if she was in a better mood, but she was shouting at Dad, so I went into her bedside drawer in the dark. I could feel some papers, shoved in at the back. I found the cream, and some nice perfume. I’ll put it back after I’ve had a try.
Leg
School today was crap: Maths, Geography, then Domestic Science with the Dreaded Miss Gibbs. Sasha said she would stick her head in the oven, but we pointed out it was electric. She has got very carried away with Sylvia Plath, who we are reading in English, but Sylvia had a gas oven, obviously. Colette Fitzgerald suggested Sasha try electrocuting herself, but I said as her cooking partner, it would be me who’d have to clear up the mess, so she just crushed an egg in her hand instead. It was the one funny moment in a draggy day. I kept drifting off while making my scotch egg, thinking about seeing Aron at shul on Saturday. He is so nice; his hair is really pure blond, almost white. It looks as soft as a baby’s hair.
I think Mum knows I like him. Last week I was in the loo after the service and I heard her come in and say to someone, ‘Isn’t it interesting how many young women are coming to shul since the student rabbi joined us!’ and they both laughed. I nearly died of embarrassment. I had to wait in the cubicle till they’d gone, and then Mum had a go at me for holding her up.
Batmitzvah class with Max after school this evening. Yuck. Max is so old he dribbles over the books. He sits right next to me, running his finger along the words. He sometimes puts his hand on my leg while I am chanting my Hebrew.
I read in a magazine about a man on a tube train who started touching a lady’s bum. She turned right round and said, ‘Would you mind not groping me?’ Everyone in the carriage stared, and he got off the train, covered in shame. Every time Max touches my knee I want to say something, but I just can’t. We can hear Mum clattering along with the tea tray for ages, so he always has his hand back by the time she comes in. I did tell her after the third time he did it. She was in a foul mood and just said, ‘I’m afraid that’s a typical bloody man, Melissa.’
Laura always has loads of brilliant stories – things are always happening to her – and this was the first properly exciting thing I’d ever told her. She was more interested in Mum than Max and my knee, though. She said, ‘What’s made The Charming Mrs Cline such a man-hater?’
Mum did have a quiet word with Max, and for about a month there was no touching, but then he started to do it again. At least it proves I am not ugly.
Skimpy
Laura and I went shopping for her Valentine’s disco outfit. She tried on the whole of Chelsea Girl and finally chose a pink dress with tiny roses. You could see a lot of her bosom in it. Fifteen pounds! I’ve never spent that much in my life. I hope my jeans will be all right. I didn’t know we were supposed to wear dresses. Back at her house she showed the dress to her mum. Anthony East was there, too. He had black hair, slicked back, and was wearing a navy suit. Mrs Morente had on very high orange sandals and was laughing when we came in. She stopped laughing when she saw Laura, and told her the dress was ‘too skimpy’.
Anthony East said, ‘She’s all right, Olivia, it’s the fashion.’
Mrs Morente smiled with all her teeth. ‘Showing her knickers is the fashion, is it, Tony?’
Laura burst into tears and rushed out of the room. I was left standing there like a lemon, except lemons don’t tend to be bright red, so actually more like a tomato. When I went back up, Laura was putting on lipstick in front of her three-way mirror. I said, ‘Anthony East is very good-looking,’ thinking she would be pleased.
She blotted her lips. ‘God, I think he’s hideous. He made Mama cry last week.’
To cheer her up I did impressions of teachers at school. After a while she was sobbing with laughter, holding her stomach and begging me to stop. We both ended up lying on the bed gasping for breath and cuddling. It was lovely. But Laura said we had better work on our dancing for the disco. She turned on her record player and we spent ages doing routines for songs from Grease. The one for ‘Greased Lightning’ was brilliant. I jumped into her arms and she swung me to the left then the right. By the time Dad came to collect me, I was dead on my feet, and spent the evening watching telly cuddled up on the sofa with Mummy.
Disco Day
I tried to get out of shul this morning, because I wanted to start getting ready, but Mum was in a mood over the Coke-stained bedspread, which she’d just discovered at the bottom of the laundry basket. She snapped that not even film stars needed ten hours to get ready and I was going to shul and that was that. Laura says I’m lucky I only go to synagogue once a week, because she has to go to church three times on Sundays. But her church sounds miles more interesting than shul; it has candles and confessing, and even incense, which Dad won’t let me have in case I burn the house down. Actually, shul was okay because there was a new family with a nice-looking son.
After lunch Laura came over, and we showed Mum and Dad our ‘Greased Lighting’ routine. They clapped. I did the splits, and nearly got right down to the floor. Then Laura did her make-up, and tied her hair into a ponytail at the top of her head. She looked beautiful in the pink roses dress and high shoes. I felt even shorter than usual. By the time Dad drove us and Danners to the club I was really nervous. I couldn’t hear what Danners and Laura were talking about because I was in the front with Dad, who kept going on about his ‘first dance’. Dance! No one calls it that.
I signed Laura in and we went through to the hall, which was dark with proper flashing lights. The music was really loud and I couldn’t see where it was coming from. Laura yelled in my ear, ‘It’s “Le Freak”!’ and pulled me into the middle of the floor. She started dancing straight away, smiling and flicking her hair. We hadn’t done a routine to this song so I tried to follow her, but every time I got the hang of a move she started doing something different, so in the end I copied a girl who was just moving from one foot to the other. Then Laura pulled me over so we were dancing near Danners and his mates. Towse was there, and my heart began thumping. He was wearing skintight jeans and a black T-shirt. I thought about the Valentine’s card I’d got him, hidden in my jacket pocket, and wondered when I would give it to him. When we finally sat down, Danners and Towse came too, which was amazing because normally at the club Dan pretends not to know me. Both of them were talking to Laura, though I couldn’t hear what they were saying because of the music. But I was happy just to watch Towse. I was chatting to a girl called Shelley when ‘Greased Lightning’ came on. I looked at Laura but she hadn’t noticed, so I tapped her arm.
‘Ow!’ she yelled. ‘Why did you hit me?’
‘Sorry, Laura, I didn’t mean to. Shall we do our routine?’
‘I don’t feel like dancing any more.’ She rubbed her arm where I’d touched her, and turned back to the boys. It got quite late and they turned off the lights. Shelley said, ‘Oh no, it’s the smoochy songs,’ but straight away a boy came up and asked her to dance. I watched them to see how you did it. It didn’t seem too difficult. I was in a trance watching Shelley’s feet moving slowly round when Laura came over and whispered, ‘Towse has asked me to dance. Do you mind?’
I shook my head, and Towse pulled her onto the dance floor. Danners asked a blonde girl to dance. I waited for a while but no one came over, so I went to the loo. I put Towse’s card in the sanitary
towel incinerator; first time I have ever used one of those. Then I sat in a cubicle reading a leaflet about the Green Cross Code that someone had left behind.
At ten o’clock I left the toilet to see if Daddy had arrived. He was at the entrance talking to Rosa Spiegel. It was so lovely to see him. He gave me the car keys and I let myself into the front seat. About ten minutes later, Dad came back with Laura and Danners. Laura asked where I had got to and I said I was ‘around and about’.
Everyone was quiet on the way home. When we dropped Laura off she said, ‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’
I said, ‘Okay,’ and did the best smile I could.
Laura
19 FEBRUARY 2003
Knee to knee round Mama’s kitchen table, so squashed together that Heifer’s upholstered bust keeps bumping my arm. She is weeping, as she has been pretty much since Michael died, presumably to show everyone how wonderfully sensitive she is. Evie is subdued, smart in a navy dress, sitting on her father’s lap. Huw wriggles uncomfortably, runs his finger round the neck of his shirt. He keeps telling me his suit’s shrunk, accusingly, as if it’s my fault. Mama bustles about, as much as one can in such a cramped space, obsessively brewing pots of coffee. Her eyes are red and her skin is blotchy. I tried to get her to put on some make-up this morning but she waved me away.
Danny, sitting next to Huw, is beautiful in a dark-grey suit. His eyes are glistening, eyelashes black and spiky. He holds the chicken baby on his lap. Two of his other children crouch at his feet, colouring in poorly executed drawings of bible scenes.
Heifer went out first thing this morning, and when I opened the door to her, she presented me with a box of eggs and a bag of flour. I have literally no idea why. She’s also put tea towels over all the mirrors. I took off the one over the bathroom mirror, but the cheeky cow crept in and put it back!
For some irritating reason, Mama seems to find comfort in these Jewish rituals. I’m reminded of when she first fell in love with Michael and told me we were going to become Jewish. Mama even played the organ at the Clines’ synagogue for a few months. The conversion never happened, though. After we left Edgware, Mama stopped going to church, but that was all, and Michael pretty much gave up being a Jew. Now Heifer’s convinced Mama that Michael must have a proper Jewish burial. This began yesterday when Mama said she would scatter Michael’s ashes on the beach. Heifer went mad: apparently, Orthodox Jews don’t allow cremation. Who knew? I kept saying that Michael wasn’t religious, but no one wanted to hear. Danny made some phone calls, and now we’re burying Michael in a Jewish cemetery in Norwich. The only thing Mama’s decided for herself is that I am to ask for a prayer to be said for Michael at my church back home. She’s in such a state she hardly knows what she’s doing. When I rang Julie Owen, her friend up the road, to tell her about Michael, Mama grabbed the phone from me and started sobbing, ‘I knew he would leave me, Julie. He was mi amor, love of my life.’
I’ve been wondering if Mama will turn to me; if I’ll get her back now Michael’s not here. I was very fond of him, don’t get me wrong. But between my father leaving and Michael coming along, there were a few years when it was just Mama and me, give or take a few boyfriends. I liked it just us. That feeling of us girls against the world.
I scrape my chair a few millimetres away from Heifer’s. But her enormous shelf-bust still reaches me. What a disjointed little group we are. How would we be described in a documentary about complicated modern families?
This man here, intones the sombre voice-over, is Laura’s husband, and she is grateful he is with her at this tragic time, though luckily the funeral is the day after his very important devolution meeting. Laura wonders what he would have done in the event of a clash. Laura and her husband have not had sexual intercourse since she revealed that she was unexpectedly pregnant with his child. He has, in fact, been behaving like an asshole. The voice-over man wouldn’t usually use such strong language but he thinks it appropriate here. Despite this, Laura is trying to make things right between them. The other man at the table is Laura’s stepbrother, though once, long ago, he was her lover. And Laura wouldn’t object if he were again. His huge milch-cow wife is also here, her bosom taking up half the kitchen. Here we have Laura’s mother, consumed by grief and consequently making some odd decisions. Here, Laura’s daughter, in denial about her murderous feelings towards her forthcoming sibling. And absent, yet very central, is the man they are here to bury: Laura’s stepfather.
I haven’t felt like crying since Michael died. Hopefully everyone assumes I’m so grief-stricken that I’m beyond tears. But it feels more like the death of an uncle than a father. Which I guess is fair enough. He was ‘Uncle Michael’, at first, and although when they married Mama wanted me to call him Dad, it never felt natural. I’ve always thought I was lucky to get a second chance at having a dad, to make up for my own crappy father. Now it turns out that, after all these years, he still feels like ‘Uncle Michael’.
The voice-over man continues:
So. Everyone in the family is here. All except Michael’s daughter, Melissa. Despite leaving messages everywhere, with all her friends and acquaintances, the family have heard nothing since a brief email. They don’t know if she is aware of her father’s death.
My skirt, the only dark elasticated-waist one I own, is unevenly short at the front, twisted round by my bump. Very attractive. I go upstairs to sort it out, and to get away from Heifer’s snuffling and her boring anecdotes about Michael. I want to grab her flabby arm, shout in her face, ‘He wasn’t even your dad!’ But then, he wasn’t mine, either.
Huw and Evie’s things are strewn all over my room. All the other rooms are occupied by the Clines and their five million kids. I step over the debris, sit at the dressing table and pull the fucking towel off the three-way mirror. Can you believe she’s had the nerve to come in here? Mind you, I almost put it back on again when I see how horrendous I look. I scrabble round in the drawer for the old make-up I found the other day. I take the cap off a dusty lipstick – ‘Stupid Cupid’ – and sniff the sweet ruby stub. The smell plunges me back.
Miffy and I are in my old house in Edgware, in front of this same mirror. Her face is done up in pink and blue candy colours. We both watch my reflection as I apply lipstick, the deepest crimson: cock-sucker red, we call it reverently, I having got that name from an older girl at school and passed it on to Miffy. Neither of us has the faintest idea what it means, though we guess it’s something naughty, and I pretend that I know. Again and again, I glide the sweet-smelling goo over my lips – three, four, five layers – then blot it hard against a tissue. We examine not my lips or their reflection, but the round red mouth I have made on the tissue. This, we know, is the mark of a woman. ‘Perfect,’ says Miffy.
There aren’t many mourners apart from us. Michael and Mama weren’t much for socialising. Just Mama’s mate Julie, and a few of Michael’s friends, relics from his working life and his polytechnic days. They still think of him as Michael-and-Andrea, even though Michael and Mama were together for twenty-four years: longer than he was with Andrea. They’re from the generation before the one that is cool about divorce. They avoid Mama’s eye, look at her feet while they say how sorry they are. They don’t know what to say to me, either. They gaze past my ear, muttering sorry, sorry, sorry, till I want to grab their faces, twist their heads, force them to look at me.
They’re only slightly more comfortable with Danny. On the one hand, he’s Michael’s boy; on the other, he’s a mad Hassidic Jew with a mad Hassidic wife. We’re all relieved when an usher asks us to take our seats. The men stay downstairs while we women troop obediently up to a gallery. A woman with a tipsy wig hands us each a little booklet with the stark legend Prayers For the Dead printed on the front. The Cantor starts to sing in a deep chocolaty voice, and I follow the words in my Dead pamphlet.
‘El malei rachamim shokhen ba-m’romim …
God full of mercy, who dwells on high …’
I’ve been in a syn
agogue before, of course, back when Mama played the organ at Miffy’s synagogue. It was kind of a wishy-washy progressive place. Men and women sat together: often, I sat next to Danny. The whole building was make-do-and-mend, a converted scout hut with folding chairs and electric plug-in heaters. The sacred Ark of the Covenant had previously been a wardrobe.
‘Ha-m’tzei m’nuchah n’khonah tachat …
Grant proper rest on the wings of the Divine Presence …’
The Ark here is an expensive mahogany box, and the everlasting light hanging above it looks like it’s made from Murano glass. It makes me think of our honeymoon in Venice, of how I dragged Huw round every single glass shop in search of the perfect vase, how he never complained, how he bought me an ice-cream the size of a baby’s head. Hard to believe sometimes that we are the same two people.
The tiny windows are so high up that the little sun they let in stays near the ceiling, floating above us like a layer of smoke. This synagogue suits Heifer’s fundamentalism: dark and cold. We could do with some of those electric heaters. Everyone keeps their coat on, apart from the Cantor, who presumably is used to it, or else warmed by an inner fire. I sit back, and let the Hebrew wash over me.
‘V’yanuchu b’shalom al mish’kabam v’noma.
And may he repose in peace on his resting place’
Like most of the men sitting below us, Huw is wearing a borrowed cotton cuple. He keeps putting up a hand to check it’s still there. I scan the heads till I find Danny. His is a special mourning cuple made of rich black velvet. He is skinny in his black coat, too big for him, like a boy wearing his father’s clothes. I fantasise that I can smell his lemony scent. I imagine his lips moving as he mumbles the words along with the Cantor. It’s all meaningless sounds to me, but of course he can hear something profound in it.
